


a gift with a price

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Grant Ward is a good friend, Hydra Grant Ward, Jemma Simmons Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-12
Updated: 2020-02-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:54:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22684300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: Grant hasn't seen Fitz and Simmons since the Hub, but less has changed than he hoped.
Relationships: Jemma Simmons & Grant Ward
Comments: 6
Kudos: 61





	a gift with a price

**Author's Note:**

> **Content Warning!** If you've read those archive warnings up there and you feel comfortable moving forward then by all means do so. If you're still a little ambivalent, know that these events do not occur ~on screen~ in the fic and they do not happen between the two main characters but they are a major part of the plot so if that's an issue for you, this is your cue to leave.

Grant’s pleased to discover, when he arrives at the rendezvous point, that the mission hasn’t gone as poorly as he thought. They failed in their objective of securing the alien artifact, but they came away with something much more valuable.

“Fitz,” he says, smiling at his ex-teammate. Fitz’s expression, if possible, drops even further.

“Ward.” He looks him over top to bottom, heartbreak plain on his face. He’s searching for something, but Grant can’t figure what. Not that he spends much time on Fitz because there’s another prize to come out of today.

“Simmons.” There’s no sign she’s been harmed, but she’s pale and her head’s tucked like she’s expecting a blow. “Ortilla,” Grant says, more softly than he’d usually address any of his team. “Back off. Aldridge.” He tips his head to the side, indicating she should take Ortilla’s place.

If his people are questioning the order, they know better than to voice it in front of the prisoners—or in front of him, most likely. They just follow him onto the waiting quinjet, prisoners in tow.

Turns out his people are as smart as he thought and when they take their seats, Aldridge and Warrington, the only two women on board, have made themselves a wall between Simmons and Hicks, who’s got Fitz on his other side.

“Ward,” Fitz says, pleading, “you don’t have to do this.”

“No,” he agrees. “But I want to.”

Fitz shakes his head. “Whatever Garrett did to you or he’s using against you, you don’t have to follow him-”

Hicks hides a laugh with a cough. Grant knows why. As far as everyone’s concerned, from the lowest grunt to the other heads circling around, looking for weakness, Grant’s not following anyone. He’s been running the show since the uprising. Personally, Grant’s not sure what to feel about that, no matter how true it might be. He likes his independence, always has, but…

As for Fitz’s continuing appeal to his better nature, that he knows exactly how to respond to.

“I’m not brainwashed, Fitz,” he says, more kindly than he would have if it were just the two of them. “And there’s no one I care about enough for him to control me with. I’m here because I want to be. If you two are smart, you’ll be saying the same soon.”

Simmons makes a faint sound. She’s looking better, no longer has him worried she’s gonna pass out any second. Considering they’re in the air at this point, it’s a major improvement.

“Don’t look so sad,” he says, hoping to tease some more color into her cheeks. “I’ve got a present for you.”

It’s not quite what he hoped for, but the glare she levels at him _is_ an improvement on the blank terror of earlier, so he’ll take it. “I don’t care if you dug that alien corpse out of the ruins of the Guest House, I’m not interested in doing any science for _Hydra_.” She says the name with such distaste you’d think the entire organization was something she once found stuck to her shoe.

Grant only goes on smiling back. “There’s that spunk I’ve missed. Nice to see you’re back with us.”

To anyone else it sounds like he’s commenting on her withdrawn demeanor up to now. Simmons’ thin mouth says she knows exactly what he’s really talking about.

<<<<<

_Grant’s never been big on letting medics look at him, especially mid-mission. Far as he’s concerned, he knows his limits and the docs don’t, end of story. But Coulson’s not letting him accompany Hand to the Fridge without the okay from Simmons, so he follows her into one of the less wrecked exam rooms and takes off his shirt so they can get this thing over with._

_He expects the gasp. His tac vest took the brunt of the punishment those Hydra grunts dealt him, but it also widened the impact area. So the bruises are less deep, but they’re a whole lot bigger and, at this early stage, a whole lot worse looking._

_He tells her all this and she nods without ever meeting his eyes. She readies gauze for his cuts and scrapes and a bandage to wrap his ribs. He’s waiting for the speech about how he shouldn’t be going at all, wondering what’s taking her so long, she's usually halfway through it by now, when it finally hits him what’s wrong._

_Simmons is stalling. Usually she can’t wait to get her hands on him during a physical. She’s into him, has been for months, and he’s played into that. Half in hopes he could somehow leverage it into her help with saving John and half just for the fun of it. But now she’s struggling just to stand this close to him. Hell, she’s even marking the distance to the door under her eyelashes like she’s thinking about running._

_Alarm bells blare in Grant’s head._ She knows. _He doesn’t know how-_

_Fuck. Yes, he does._

_Ever since he saw that call to arms in the briefing room, he’s been on edge, worrying about Simmons all alone at the Hub with no one to watch her back. He and Trip even worked out a search pattern to take after their mission was done so they wouldn’t have to regroup before looking for her. He thought, when they found her with Hand, that everything was all right._

_Obviously he was wrong._

_Hand mentioned Simmons ran into some trouble before they got to her. It’s not a big leap to think one of the Hydra agents she met was smart enough to try talking The Jemma Simmons into joining up and used her connection to him as a means to do it._

_Why she hasn’t said anything up to now, he doesn’t know, but he knows he’s gotta find out how much she knows so he can smooth this over before he leaves or he and John aren’t going anywhere._

_“Listen, Simmons,” he says, “you were alone for a long time in a scary situation. If you wanna talk about it-”_

_He reaches for her, just a friendly hand to rest on her shoulder, but she jerks back like he was throwing a punch. The tray of supplies next to her and the counter at her back hem in her movements, forcing her to brush up against his hand as she tries to move away. His curled fingers catch on her shirt above the buttons and he feels the give in it where there shouldn’t be any. Her frantic turn lets him see the incoming bruise her high collar was hiding and for a heartbeat he actually gets angry that some shit head tried to choke Simmons._

_Then he realizes what it really means._

_“Who did this?” It’s been a long day and it’s not over yet, that’s gotta be why he fucks up and lets some fraction of the murderous rage he feels slip into his voice._

_She curls up, arms across her chest, hand pulling at the torn edge of her collar, trying to keep it closed while also pushing the rip down beneath her sweater so he can’t see it._

_“I’m sorry,” he says, forcing himself to at least appear calm. “Simmons, I am_ so sorry _.” Not just for his unchecked tone but for the fact of his being here, alone in a shut room with her, and most of all for what happened. He’s reminded of that day at military school when he heard Thomas had broken his arm and he knew—he just fucking knew—that it was Christian’s fault. And what was Grant doing? Shooting at targets and sitting in class instead of being at home, protecting his baby brother. And now he’s done it again, was thousands of miles away when Simmons needed protecting most. He can’t undo what happened, but he can sure as hell make it right._

_He ducks down so he’s on her eye level. It has the dual benefits of getting her attention on him and making him appear less imposing._

_“I need you to tell me who did this to you.” He hopes she realizes the threat laced into his words isn’t for her. It’s a promise that he’s gonna tear whoever it was limb from limb and no one—not Coulson, not John,_ no one _—is gonna stop him._

_“I- I don’t know.” She starts shaking her head and then the shaking sinks down to the rest of her. “I didn’t know his name. I-”_

_“Okay. That’s okay.” He thinks about the time limit here. He could take her down, walk her through lock-up and make her pick out the sick fuck who did it, but with how many Hydra agents Hand managed to capture, that could take hours. That’s time he doesn’t have. And then there’s no guarantee the guy didn’t make it out of the Hub before Hand’s forces regained control._

_“I was hiding,” Simmons says, snapping him out of his thoughts. “In one of the labs. I thought it would be safest. Everything of real value would be in the storage rooms except for the equipment, but all of that weighs so much. I- I- I forgot to lock the door. And then he came in. It was so quiet he could hear me breathing. And- and I should have locked the door-”_

_“No!” This time he means to be loud, to get her focus out of the memories and on him. Once he has it, he softens his voice. “No, Simmons, you did nothing wrong. This is_ not your fault _, okay?”_

_He realizes when he feels her shaking that he grabbed onto her without meaning to. She realizes it too and, before he can pull away, falls into him. She cries against his chest, quiet, wracking sobs the same as the ones that overtook her in Morocco when it finally hit her she’d survived._

_When she’s cried herself out, he helps her fix her shirt again and makes her promise she’ll tell May about it. He knows he should stay, maybe tell May himself, but it feels almost like stealing to do it for her and she’s had so much stolen already. And, besides, he’s gotta hurry to the hangar so he can protect John. That at least he knows he can do._

>>>>>

Simmons didn’t tell May, that much is obvious. For one, if she had, there’s no way she and Coulson would’ve let Simmons out into the field again. Maybe ever. For another, Fitz clearly doesn’t know. He’s protective when Grant orders them separated, but gives no sign he knows that Simmons might have something more serious to fear than a little imprisonment.

Part of that might just be down to his continued trust in Grant. All the way to base, he kept dropping hints that he knows Grant’s not really here willingly, that he’d never do this kind of thing on his own, blah blah blah. It’s almost touching, really. Grant’s always considered himself one of the best when it comes to undercover work, hearing the comparisons to Romanoff never hurt either, but seeing with his own eyes that he was _so good_ that months after he turned on the guy, Fitz is still determined the cover was real … he’s better than he thought.

Fitz gets sent to D building, where the Incentives assets sleep. Grant’s not about to use Simmons against him, but he also knows Fitz won’t be signing up all that willingly. A night or two listening to them cry down there might help scare him in line.

As for Simmons, he lets Aldridge bring her along while he checks in at the Suite, as they’ve taken to calling it. In reality, it’s a long-term care ward, outfitted for a single person and with walls that could withstand a direct hit from a grenade.

“There he is,” John says when he steps inside. Grant tries to ignore how weak his voice sounds just like he ignores the dozen or so machines keeping him alive. “My boy.” He sighs those last words with a smile and for a second he almost seems like he’s gone to sleep. “How’d it go today? Did you find my miracle?”

“No. SHIELD beat us to it. Whole thing went FUBAR.”

“If the job was easy…” John’s glassy eyes slide past Grant. It takes him a second too long to take in Simmons standing at the door. “Well, well, well. Not a total loss.”

“No.”

“I told you,” Simmons says, “I’m not going to help you. I certainly won’t help save _him_.” Her voice almost doesn’t waver when she says it, Grant’s impressed.

“Tell me how you really feel,” John says, shifting a little. The movement hurts him more than it helps, Grant can see that.

“You want up?” he asks, half-hopeful.

“Down, down.”

Grant doesn’t let his disappointment show on his face. John’s weak. So weak he can feel it when he reaches beneath him to lift up a body that’s all skin and bones and cybernetics. John groans, but sighs when Grant sets him down again.

“That’s the ticket.” His eyes are already closed, the heart monitor in the corner blinking slow. “Take care of the girl,” he murmurs.

“I will.”

Grant stays a minute more, watching the only real father he’s ever known slip into a pained sleep. Slowly, the doctors he hardly notices anymore emerge from the corners of the room to take notes and administer drugs and pretend like what they’re doing is any help at all.

He leaves them to it and returns to the hall with Simmons. “Hit the showers,” he tells Aldridge. He only needed her to keep an eye on Simmons in there. She knows more about all that shit than the doctors who actually use it every day; if she’d wanted to, she could’ve killed John before Grant could’ve stopped her.

“I mean it,” Simmons says, flinching only slightly when he takes her hands. “After all that man’s done to us, I won’t do him any – favors.” She blinks down at her uncuffed hands like she’s shocked he took the damn things off.

“I know.” He pockets the cuffs and heads for the elevator. “Come on.” After four steps with no sound of her following, half-turns to face her again. “I told you,” he says in answer to the question she refuses to ask even though it’s written all over her face, “I have a present for you. Now, you can either come see what it is or you can wait here for John to die. But his doctors say that’ll be a few weeks still, so you might want to come with me first, just to pass some of the time.”

She hesitates another second before following.

“It’s not Fitz’s severed head, is it?” she asks while they’re waiting for the elevator.

He chuckles. She’s surprisingly close. “No, no severed heads. And Fitz is safe. If he won’t work, I’ll probably wind up trading him to Coulson for that artifact he stole from me today.”

He can see her roll her eyes in the reflective surface of the doors. “ _Stole from you_ ,” she murmurs under her breath, no doubt hoping the sound of the doors opening will hide it. Grant just smiles and precedes her in, letting her choose her moment to follow.

She does of course. The one thing about Simmons: her curiosity always wins out.

“You didn’t tell May,” he says on the ride down.

She shifts uncomfortably. “The others needed me. They didn’t need some sobbing wreck who couldn’t even be alone in the same room as half the team.”

Yeah, that’s kinda how he figured it went. Simmons pushing down her trauma, same as she did after the virus, pretending everything’s fine and dandy. And the team assuming all her jumpiness and fifty-yard stares were because of the same world-shaking crisis that was weighing on them all.

It’s not the first time he’s wished he could’ve stayed with them, but it’s the first time it comes from more than just a nostalgic fondness.

She stiffens when the doors open on what’s obviously one of the detention levels. Grant just marches on in, waves off the guard at the desk, and trusts her to follow.

Their destination isn’t all that deep. This particular level is for serious offenders—it’s where he’ll keep May if he ever manages to catch her alive—so the security’s tight already.

The walls are grey with only faint lines in them to indicate the shapes of doors and opaque windows that otherwise blend perfectly with the walls. That’s to make escape harder not only physically (which door won’t just lead right back into another cell?) but mentally (where the fuck _are_ the doors?).

Grant stops at one of the windows and taps the bottom corner. It slowly lightens, turning transparent and giving them a view of the brightly lit room beyond. He smiles to himself, glad his quick texts to Markham got things set up how he’d wanted. Not that the normal state of affairs would’ve been a let-down, but he doesn’t want Simmons to have to wait.

Cautiously, she steps up beside him. He can hear her swallowing. She was never the type to get queasy on him, so he’s guessing it’s just run-of-the-mill fear that has her inching ever so slowly closer. The man strapped to a surgical table inside is pissed. He’s yelling—though they can’t hear a thing from out here—and when he gives a yank on the straps Simmons actually jumps back.

“That’s-” she says. No surprise she’s struggling to finish the sentence, but Grant finds he really can’t bear for her to. So before she finds her voice he does it for her.

“Your present.”

She looks up at him with wide eyes. To his relief—and that’s something of a surprise; he’s spent so long working on this, he didn’t really stop to consider she might not be grateful until just now—there’s no disgust in them, only shock.

“I told you I didn’t know who he was,” she says in something approaching awe. “How did you know?”

He shrugs casually. “We stole the Hub’s hard drives from the military a few months back.”

“But the cameras in the lab were down during the uprising.”

In _the_ lab, she says, like she checked on that one specifically. He doesn’t like the sound of that or its implications.

“There were other cameras. On adjoining hallways. And then there were the trackers, noting down the badge number of every agent who passed into a restricted area, whether their card was scanned or not.” Just because every door in the Hub was opened for Hydra's big party doesn’t mean the trackers went offline. They kept on scanning through the whole uprising. It was just a matter of narrowing down where Simmons had gone and who was in the area at the same time. Not that hard to be honest.

“That must have taken weeks.”

He shrugs again. “I had to do something whenever John fell asleep.”

The reminder brings Simmons’ attention back to Levens. Grant considers telling her his name, but decides if she wants to know she can ask. Better he remain nameless, less chance it’ll haunt her dreams too.

“I’ve been to a lot of therapists in my life,” he says. He steps forward to lean against the wall beside the window, not so much for the better view of Levens pissing himself in fear as for the better view of Simmons’ face while he talks. “Some of them talk about closure, some about letting go, some about forgiveness. Personally I like that first one.”

“You think I should hurt him. Pay him back for hurting me.” There’s too much going on in there for him to accurately read what she’s thinking. But she hasn’t slapped him and called him a psycho yet, so he figures they’re doing okay.

“You could do the other,” he admits, “and he’s yours to do with what you want, so say the word and I’ll let him go.”

She gazes at him in no small amount of shock. He doesn’t tell her that he’ll be letting Levens go in that field out back, the one they landed in, and then heading up on the roof to do some target practice while he tries to make the trees a mile out.

She takes another look at Levens. He’s calmed down some now, though he’s obviously still cursing at the ceiling.

“And you think this, offering me the chance for revenge, will convince me to save John Garrett.”

“This isn’t a play, Simmons, it’s a gift. Yeah, I want you to use that genius brain of yours to buy John a little more time, but that’s not what this is about. He’s yours either way.”

She squirms. If he’s reading her right, she wants to take the offer. The fear she felt initially is wearing off and every glance she throws Levens’ way has a little more hate behind it. He gives her a minute, lets her war with her better angels until that hate burns bright in her eyes.

“He saved me from guys like him,” Grant says, surprising her. “John, I mean.” He puts his focus on Levens, letting her take in just his words. “I messed up. Made a mistake. I don’t regret what I tried to do, but how I did it… Sloppy.” He shakes his head at his own childish anger. “No one got hurt and the only people who suffered for it were my parents, whose house got burned down in the process. One of their houses, I should say, so they were fine. And, the thing is, my family’s been in politics for a hundred years. They’ve got connections. All my parents had to do was give one press conference- hell, one _interview_ , say it was all a tragic misunderstanding, crappy timing that I came home from school the same day the house burned down and thank God no one was hurt, and it all would’ve gone away.”

He takes a second to live in that scenario. He actually thought for a while, when he was locked up in juvie, that things would go that way.

He was such an idiot.

“But instead they used those connections to have me tried as an adult. I was seventeen. Some guy like him would’ve made me his bitch in the first week. I’d still be there today if John hadn’t broken me out, given me purpose.”

He doesn’t much like to think about that scenario, but he lets it sit a minute so Simmons can absorb exactly why John has his loyalty. And she is. Her brow is furrowed, she’s got her thinking face on. He’s just thrown a wrench into her pretty little understanding of what makes him and John the bad guys.

He pushes off from the wall and wipes his hand along the side of the door. The controls light up. Stuff like sound, temperature, the door lock. It’s all pretty intuitive, but just to get the ball rolling he taps the door control and it slides open. Levens starts yelling again at the sound, demands and curses mixing together in a senseless mess. To her credit, Simmons cringes but doesn’t let him drive her back.

“Your prints are already in the system,” he tells her, “so you can control the doors from out here or in there.” Skye may have erased all their identities from every database on the planet, but SHIELD’s always been big on tradition and every agent has paper files somewhere. Heck of a job to find them though; he hopes Simmons is grateful. “Take as much time as you need. Decide or don’t, he’s not going anywhere. When you’re done, just tell the guard up front to point you towards my office.”

He doesn’t wait to see what she’ll do, doesn’t look back, but she must make some decision because just as he’s reaching the guard desk, the yelling cuts out so abruptly it can only be because the door shut. Which side she chose, he’ll wait for her to tell him.


End file.
